Twenty games into the season is about the time most teams start to get a feel for what they are all about.

The rotations are becoming familiar, the way a team is best suited to winning games and what obstacles they have to overcome to remain competitive have been identified and everyone is comfortable.

Well, comfortable assuming the results to date have been to a team’s liking.

On the latter front — the results front — the Raptors have little about which to complain.

They are 16-4 and showing no signs of slippage. The schedule hasn’t been opponent strong, but it has been road heavy and the Raptors have been exceptionally strong away from home with just two losses despite two extended trips already out of the way.

But in terms of what they are, how comfortable everyone is, in that regard, the Raptors are probably a little behind the curve.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“I think we have a talented team,” point guard Kyle Lowry said after Friday’s win over Washington. “I think our defense is where we can hang our hats, really. I still don’t know where we are, potential-wise, but we’re a defensive-minded team with some real offensive weapons.”

Head coach Nick Nurse has only had his full complement of players healthy for one game this season and that, more than anything, is what has most believing this team still has another gear.

Nurse himself sees things a little differently. He came into the year expecting to have to spend a considerable time getting Kawhi Leonard back up to speed after missing all but nine games a year ago in San Antonio.

Only Leonard showed up in training camp pretty much ready to go. The team has kept the kid gloves on him to this point sitting him out the second game of back-to-backs but that too could change in time.

“If I had to be honest, now that we are here looking back … I didn’t have any preconceived notions that we would be where we are with Kawhi at this point,” Nurse said Saturday. “That was my first thing. I thought it would be a more easing in thing. I didn’t know he would be this ready to play.”

Leonard has been everything and more than the Raptors could have hoped. Even with the organization sitting him out on the back end of back-to-backs Leonard has been a pivotal part of Toronto’s early success with his two-way play. He’s averaging just over 33 minutes a night while contributing 24.4 points 8.4 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game.

There are still times in games where it feels Leonard is relying too much on his own ability but that too is to be expected as he learns the rest of the roster.

Leonard declared himself fully healthy for really the first time all season following Friday’s win, although in fairness, he may have been feeling that way for a while. He was also asked what read he has on his new team a quarter of the way through the season.

“We’re playing well, I still think we can get better,” Leonard said. “Our whole lineup hasn’t been here, guys have been out, so once we just get everybody here, and playing, like I said this upcoming schedule is going to be good, just all of us playing, and getting that rhythm of playing, one day off and then game, it’s going to be good.”

But there’s no question Leonard has been received with open arms by all of his teammates and has continually mentioned how, from Day 1, he has been made to feel an important and welcome part of this team.

Through 20 games, it has been as close to a perfect marriage of player and team as Masai Ujiri could have hoped when he pulled the trigger on the deal that stunned the league back in mid-July.

Nurse though, in describing his team through 20 games, still sees plenty more to be had from this group.

“I think we are OK, but I think we have a long ways to go with our growth and just organization and feel and a lot of things yet,” he said.

Nurse puts the bulk of that growth on the offensive end, where he has yet to really delve into what this group is capable of doing.

“There’s a lot of things I have lightly put in and worked on (in practice) that I haven’t busted out yet in games,” Nurse said. “I’m about ready – I’ve done a lot of things that are familiar just because of time constraints and ease of saying ‘Let’s do that now and it will get us through today.’

“The stuff that I want to get to who we are going to become has not really been brought out yet,” he admitted.

In other words, as good as they have been to date, they can still be much better.

WADE HAD BIG IMPACT ON WRIGHT

Delon Wright was fascinated with Dwyane Wade long before he met him.

When he was eventually afforded that honour at the age of 12, courtesy of his older brother Dorell Wright, who became Wade’s teammate, it was only natural that the fascination and bond would grow.

To this day, Wright, 10 years younger than Wade who is 36, still checks in regularly with Wade soliciting whatever advice the veteran NBA guard has to offer.

That this is Wade’s final season, his self-proclaimed “One Last Dance” makes today’s visit to Toronto, his penultimate in this market (the Heat are here one more time on Sunday, April 7) special for not just Wright but everyone who has been witness to his very successful career. Wright has just had a better seat than many for the entire Wade ride.

“It’s crazy because right before my brother got drafted, he became one of my favourite players because of what he did in his rookie year,” Wright said of Wade. “He has always been checking up on me and giving me advice. It has been good over the year.”

There is not even a slight hesitation when Wright is asked what he took from Wade and brought to his own game.

“Eurostep, that is No. 1,” Wright said of the herky-jerky two-step he uses to such great effect in his own game when attacking the basket. “That’s the first thing I took from him. The steals, playing the passing lanes. I would literally watch him every game. Come home from school., my Dad would have the game on and I would study it from like 12-years-old. I still do to this day.”

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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